Rants & Reviews

04 August 2016

LONDON: The Portrait Gallery and the Thames

LONDON August 4, 2016

Tomer and I started the day (the photo is in front of a wall tree in my neighborhood) with a meal called “English Breakfast.” I tell you this as a warning. A stomach of my age, even with its generous girth, is hard put to deal with bacon, sausage, kelp potato pancake, grilled tomato, giant grilled mushroom, two poached eggs on brown bread, all on a bed of baked beans, and a cup of coffee. When we finished we waddled off to the bus-stop to Kings X to catch the Tube, with a detour to the old lefty bookstore Housman’s which is not only surviving but thriving and expanding. I bought a button: Brexshit. Stuart Hall, a beloved lefty intellect, donated his entire library to them when he died, after having signed each one to increase the value for sale. What a great idea for all of us to do.

We met Jaya and Madeleine at the Portrait Gallery where my favorite annual exhibition – the Portrait Award – is on display free of charge. None of us agreed with the decisions of the judges and so chose our own winners. Mine is on the left. We also caught a rather astonishing exhibition called Black Chronicles (photo below)with recently discovered photos of Blacks in Britain before 1948. I ducked into the Bronte room as well.

We all had a cold drink at a café, talking, acting up, and then Jaya and Madeleine had to leave to catch a plane back to Zurich. Tomer and I walked down to the river and over the footbridge near the London Eye and along the river to the South Bank. London is exquisite, it really is. The river is at the heart of that beauty. We eventually returned over the bridge and walked up to Leicester Square. He went off shopping on Oxford St and I came home and took a pill to deal with these throbbing feet.

Osteo-arthritis of the feet is an improper affliction for a traveler like me. Even my 840 old-folks shoes from New Balance don’t allow me to walk more than an hour or two, and today we tootled for many hours. I will remain seated for the rest of the night and through the morning tomorrow. But what’s a bit of an ache in light of the chance to be with very dear friends from hither and yon?